A crucial question has eluded governments and health agencies around the world since the COVID-19 pandemic began: Did the virus originate in animals or leak from a Chinese lab?

Now, the U.S. Department of Energy has assessed with "low confidence" in that it began with a lab leak, according to a person familiar with the report who wasn't authorized to discuss it. The report has not been made public.

Russia launched a rescue ship on Friday for two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut whose original ride home sprang a dangerous leak while parked at the International Space Station.

The new, empty Soyuz capsule should arrive at the orbiting lab on Sunday.

Conspiracy theories about a U.S. research station have resurged, with social media users falsely blaming it for the Turkey-Syria earthquakes, following debunked claims it causes weather disasters and spreads the coronavirus.

A major 7.8 magnitude earthquake followed by another strong quake devastated wide swaths of Turkey and Syria early Monday, killing thousands of people.

Here's what to know:

Ayahuasca is a psychedelic tea whose roots go back hundreds of years to ceremonial use by Indigenous groups in the Amazon region.

It's widely used in South America where it is legal in several countries, including Peru and Brazil. But in the United States, it remains illegal because the brew contains the psychedelic N, N-Dimethyltryptamine or DMT.

A fishing community in southern Brazil has an unusual ally: wild dolphins.

Accounts of people and dolphins working together to hunt fish go back millennia, from the time of the Roman Empire near what is now southern France to 19th century Queensland, Australia. But while historians and storytellers have recounted the human point of view, it's been impossible to confirm how the dolphins have benefited — or if they've been taken advantage of — before sonar and underwater microphones could track them underwater.

When Rylae-Ann Poulin was a year old, she didn't crawl or babble like other kids her age. A rare genetic disorder kept her from even lifting her head. Her parents took turns holding her upright at night just so she could breathe comfortably and sleep.

Then, months later. doctors delivered gene therapy directly to her brain.

Archaeologists in Norway said Tuesday that have found a runestone which they claim is the world's oldest, saying the inscriptions are up to 2,000 years old and date back to the earliest days of the enigmatic history of runic writing.

The flat, square block of brownish sandstone has carved scribbles, which may be the earliest example of words recorded in writing in Scandinavia, the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo said. It said it was "among the oldest runic inscriptions ever found" and "the oldest datable runestone in the world."

Eating one freshwater fish caught in a river or lake in the United States is the equivalent of drinking a month's worth of water contaminated with toxic "forever chemicals", new research said on Tuesday.

The European Union wants to bolster its capacity to launch small satellites into space with a new launchpad in Arctic Sweden.

European officials and Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf inaugurated the EU's first mainland orbital launch complex on Friday during a visit to Sweden by members of the European Commission, which is the 27-nation bloc's executive arm.